


All Shall Fade

by hitagashi



Series: There and Never Back Again [2]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Bad Ending, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hobbit Spoilers, Song Lyrics, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 19:21:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2823236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitagashi/pseuds/hitagashi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Home is behind...<br/>the world ahead</p><p>((SPOILERS FOR THE BATTLE OF FIVE ARMIES MOVIE I WATCHED IT TODAY (21 Dec 2014), WROTE THIS, DOODLED (DID NOT ATTACH DOODLES) AND DECIDED I HATE MYSELF))</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Shall Fade

**Author's Note:**

> Massive spoilers for the end of the movie
> 
> But twisted to fit this verse
> 
> I decided to make a side series for the bad ends I come up with
> 
> Sobbing noises

**A world ends**

He sees Fili fall but doesn’t see him land.

He sees Fili fall and can’t reach him.

He sees Fili fall and there’s a lost look in his eyes.

He sees Fili fall.

He sees Fili…

He sees…

He…

He lets out a hoarse shout and races up the steps with rage in his gut, sword blazing blue, and becomes more reckless than he has ever been with a sword in his hand.  Sting, which was the only thing left of the weapons he owned.  No more knives made with care by a friend, no more bow, just a sword barely better than a letter opener.

He uses it and doesn’t register the blood on his face.

And he sobs his way through his enemies, hacking and slashing and praying to the Valar to _save his child_.

He almost catches view of the boy he’d raised and suddenly the world goes dark and his last thought is…

**He saw Fili fall and he wasn’t there to catch him.**

**The world would be a happier place**

“I would take back… my words at the Gate.”

“No, no no.  Do not do this, brother.”

“Right, as she said, you’re going to live.”

“I would have us part… as friends.”

“You… I… of… I know.  I understand.”

“Farewell… Master Burglar.”  He takes a wet breath and Bilbo sobs, stroking the hair out of his face.  He cannot help, no matter how he tries it seems.  “Go back to your books… your fireplace…  Plant your trees… watch them… grow.”  Another wet breath and sobbing from DÍs who is losing more than Bilbo has in the one moment and yet he cannot feel sympathy until he finds…  “If more of us valued… home above gold… it would be a _merrier_ world. ”

“Thorin.  Thorin no.  No don’t close your eyes, brother, others are coming.”

“Thorin?”  He sees nothing, only realizes he’s bent forward after a moment.  He needs to find Fili.  Fili who fell.  Fili who needs him.  And so, numbly, he takes himself way, raises his body, and knows he’s leaving Dís to mourn her brother.  “Thorin, please…”

“He… he was a good dwarf… and a better… hobbit.”  He stops at this, sobs hitching out of his throat and knows from the wailing that he is dead but still he can’t stop.  Can’t allow himself to feel sympathy.

**He has to find Fili.**

 

**Why does it hurt so much?**

It hurts.

It hurts and nothing stops the pain.

“If this is love, I don't want it.  Take it away, please!  Why does it hurt so much?”

He hears her words as he stumbles blindly by.  He needs to find his son.  Legolas seems to see him, Tauriel is hurting, and he thinks ‘ _not Kíli too_ ’ before he’s able to wander away.

“Because it was real.”

He hears the conversation between Thranduil and Legolas, promises himself to send a letter to their friend’s child.  He’d left Rivendell in the fall once they’d gone through, he knew.  Passed beyond Elrond and Gilraen’s protection.  He thinks he should have stayed because then he wouldn’t have as much of a chance to end up like…

It hurts him so much.  He just wants his son.  His son who had burst into his life and taken it over and had never looked back.  Even when his blood family found him.  Even when he had a choice.  It was his father above all.

**He needs to find… he needs Fili.  Please, Eru, give him back his son.**

               

**Am I to leave, Fili?**

He finds him as Dwalin is coming up behind him, as Legolas leaves, and as Thranduil tries to find the living in order to heal those he can.  He finds him and all he can think is that his son looks peaceful.  Like he’s resting.  The dwarves will all want him buried in their way, in the way they know and keep all their beloved ones.  And yet he can’t think of Fili being entombed in cold stone.  Instead, his eyes trail to the blond braids come undone when they’d rushed into the final battle in order to help protect those that couldn’t protect themselves.

He doesn’t fall to his knees, instead he lowers himself and turns him, strokes his hair out of his face and weeps.  For a brief moment he curses the Valar for not protecting them and then hopes they’ll not hold it against his son because he’s _hurting_ and nothing feels like it will be better again.

Is this what they call a living death?

He begins to card his fingers through blood matted hair and brokenly whimper, tears rolling down his face.  He curls about him, humming a broken tune taught to him once, long ago, by his own mother.  The tune she’d sung when she’d thought he was going to die of his illness in the Fell Winter and had curled around his head with a pair of axes, prepared to destroy all those that might hurt him.

> “Home… is behind… the world ahead.  
>  And there are many… paths to tread.  
>  Through shadow… to the edge of night…  
>  Until the… the stars are… all alight…”

He sobs brokenly further here, hands on his son’s face.

> “Mist and shadow…  
>  Cloud and… shade…  
>  All shall fade  
>  Ah… All shall…  
>  Fade.”

**He found Fili but at what cost?**

 

**To mourn**

He bids them all goodbye, pretends his heart is lighter than it once was.  He regained his knives (stolen as they were by the Master) and Fili’s too.  Fili who lies in the Elven Halls and is likely on his way to the Great Fields.  He wonders if this is the pain Nienna first felt in the song.  He ignores this idea.

He trades quips with Gandalf at the border, comes home to find Lobelia trying to beat off her husband’s family with her umbrella as they sell his things.  She sees him, is prepared to say _something_ but stops and merely grabs hold of him.

He only barely is able to give proof of his life (he doesn’t feel alive… not anymore) and fixes some of his home before Lobelia is dragging him out and demanding he come for tea.  He thinks he could be normal until something of Fili’s first comes back.

He will never…

**It wasn’t worth it after all.**

**Author's Note:**

>  **Tauriel:** If this is love, I don't want it. Take it away, please! Why does it hurt so much?  
>  **Thranduil:** Because it was real.
> 
>  **Thorin:** Farewell, Master Burglar. Go back to your books, your fireplace. Plant your trees, watch them grow. If more of us valued home above gold, it would be a merrier world. 
> 
> The above two quotes are taken directly from the movie/trailer itself. I am so sorry. WHY DID I WRITE THIS?  
> All Shall Fade, an adaptation of A Walking Song, originally by J.R.R. Tolkien and sung by Pippin in the third LOTR movie.


End file.
